Tuesday, February 23, 2010

iPhone Scrabble Cheating App called "Word Chaser - Word Game Cheater"

A long time ago, back in my college days, I took an algorithms class. After a few lessons, I was inspired to write a Scrabble Cheating program. With what I knew back then, I came up with a very rudimentary algorithm that didn't work all that well. It was terribly inefficient, and it couldn't handle blanks. That was around 2003. I gave up and finally picked up the project again 3 years later around 2006. I rewrote the algorithm and came up with something significantly faster, and simpler. With that algorithm, I ported it blindly from Java to C++ without testing the code. I intended to write a scrabble game for PSP.

Once again, laziness gave way to ingenuity, and I let the code sat for another few years...until the iPhone came out. I've toyed with the idea in my head since September 2009. I finally got around to writing the App around early January. When I first compiled and tried my untested C++ port, to my surprise, it worked without modifications. And work progressed significantly.

Who knew UI design and implementation takes so much time. I really took the time and thought out what the UI should look like. I have never really cared for making fancy UI, until I started writing Apps for the iPhone. So after a month of "fun" coding, I finally finished, and I am proud to say it is one of my finest projects yet. I'm quite proud of it :-) and I hope everyone will like it. So, enjoy!

Frequently Asked Questions:

- Why doesn't the tile land on where it is when dragging?

When you start dragging the tile, you will see a floating tile to the top left of your thumb. The tile lands at the center of where your thumb is pressing on the iPhone screen. It does not land on where the tile is shown floating. The reason behind this is because so that you can see the tile you are dragging around.

- I can't seem to drag the tile from the bottom. All it does is scroll the tiles left and right?

Be sure to drag the tile from the bottom straight up, and not sideways. You can choose what tiles to get by sliding your thumbs left and right at the bottom of the screen. You can get a particular tile by pressing your thumbs on a particular tile, slide it straight up to the board or rack.

- How do I get rid of a particular tile?

Just drag it to the bottom of the screen to where you choose a particular tile. The bottom of the screen is essentially the tile bag. So by dragging the tile back to the bag, you are putting away the tile.

- The board does not save when exiting the App?

The App update with this feature and more is still being approved, after a month of back and forth with Apple. Sigh...